So hang on.. Are you guys arguing about what's a good argument for legalizing marijuana or what's a good argument for banning alcohol? Because the original article could go either way. And that's important here because the article makes a far better argument for legalizing marijuana than it does for banning alcohol. And if you two are thinking about different conclusions that could be drawn, that might be an unseen disagreement going on here.
So it's an argument from tradition? We have legal alcohol and illegal marijuana because history, therefore the present state of affairs is defensible? If pointing out an inconsistency risen from historical circumstances is so childish, then I guess that would make Women's Suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Marriage Equality movement all "grade school arguments over what's fair" as well.
I think the problem is that he wasn't necessarily defending it because of its traditional value. I think what he was trying to get across is that it is a relevant part of the issue, and one that was completely ignored by the article. I don't think it was pro-alcohol or anything, but a criticism of the argument itself. That was just my interpretation of the argument though, i don't want to be putting words in the tacocat's mouth.
You basically just compared buying a beer to slavery. You are part of the reason I don't talk about drugs on the Internet. I'm glad you're clever enough to find a rhetoric flaw with a statement by someone who probably agrees with you but I will continue to dread an orange hubwheel today.
Sorry, no. It's actually like I compared buying a beer to civil rights. What I did was illustrate the absurdity of your argument by applying it to a well-known situation that everybody has come to agree on. I did not alter the form of your argument. Perhaps I should illustrate more clearly? I just took alcohol and marijuana and replaced them with interracial marriage and gay marriage. That's it. I did not suggest that buying a beer is bad like slavery, so we should make it illegal along with marijuana.I'm arguing that you can't compare interracial marriage being legal to anything else being illegal (e.g. gay marriage) without ignoring why it's legal and generally oversimplifying your point to the level of a grade school argument over what's fair